Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: Lies Across America
> The falacy in proposing that the markers be changed because they don't
> reflect an unbiased history is that anything we replace them with would
> just have a different bias.

I would like to think that we do actually learn something more about history
as time goes by, as study piles up upon study, learned book upon learned
book; that we could actually write a better historical marker today than we
could have 50 or 80 years ago. It's not ALL relative, is it? If you know the
information itself in a marker is dead wrong (not just from a different
slant or point of view than the present) don't you have an obligation to get
it corrected? Do we stop updating our interpretation, retraining our
docents, and rewriting our labels, when we have newer and apparently better
information or insights?

I think the concept of interpreting the time period in which a marker was
written (historiography not history) is a little subtle for a public only
pausing by the roadside for a quick history fix.

Carol Ely
Museum Consultant
Louisville

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